Co-payment for prescription drugs helps government reduce outlays

The introduction of a co-payment system for prescription drugs is starting to reap benefits for the government in terms of spending on medicines. According to official figures, in the first 11 months of this year outlays to pharmaceutical companies declined by 1.190 billion euros, or 11.61 percent, to 9.057 billion, compared with the same period a year earlier.

After peaking in 2009 at 12.505 billion euros for the full year, spending on prescription drugs had already begun to trend lower in 2010 when the then Socialist administration of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero introduced a system of discounts for medicines and reference prices.

However, it would appear that the main detonator of late for the continuation in this trend was the approval of the co-payment system introduced by the Popular Party government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in July of last year. In that month alone, outlays declined to 699.1 million euros from 979.5 million the previous month.

Although it is difficult to accurately gauge to what extent the drop is due to the previous modifications of the Zapatero administration and those introduced last year, in general terms two thirds of the impact stems from the new measures.

However, the changes are being absorbed quickly and it is not clear to what extent the downward trend will continue. While the annual fall in spending on prescription drugs amounted to 25.45 percent in September of last year, this had moderated to a drop of 15.18 percent in November.

The figures also reflect the introduction by Catalonia of a fee of one euro for every prescription, introduced in June of last year, a move followed by Madrid at the start of this year despite objections by the central government. In the period July-November, the number of prescriptions filed in Catalonia declined by 20 percent from the same period a year earlier, compared with a fall of 14 percent in Spain as a whole.